


Buffalo Grass and Vengeance

by CalamityOS



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, F/F, Gritty, Human Trafficking, Immigration & Emigration, Slow Build, Texas, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2020-03-30 19:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19034389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityOS/pseuds/CalamityOS
Summary: "Where will you go next?" she asked finally, which was not the way she would have worded the question if she were, in general, a braver person.Aloy seemed to consider her for a moment. "Austin," she said. "I have things I need to do there." Her eyes flashed, and Nakoa thought she might have seen something burning there, but then it disappeared. "What about you? Will you go back to Mexico?"Nakoa was sure her face gave away how ridiculous that sentence sounded to her. "Will you?"Aloy gave a small laugh, and Nakoa definitely saw it this time. It was small, barely a spark, but Nakoa let it light a candle in her that she would hold dearly and shield from any and every wind. It was a smile that said "I understand better than you think." And Nakoa believed it.---SPOILERS for game stuff, but since it's translated into AU it might not actually spoil anything for you.





	1. Who Does Your Dirty Work?

“I just need to know that she’s all right,” he had pleaded with her.

She’d tried to hide her distaste from her expression when she’d said, “I’ll keep an eye out for her.” He’d thanked her profusely, given her what little information he had on where she might be staying and whom she might have contacted, and then he’d gone back to his Rosary. Aloy could have spat on him.

But now she was in San Antonio, she knew she had to look up the boy’s aunt. He’d said she worked at a hotel on the River Walk, but of course there were at least a dozen of those, and no matter how nice a concierge was, they didn’t take kindly to strangers coming in and asking about their employees. Aloy had stayed in the city as long as she could stand it, and was about to call it a wash, to move on to Houston like she’d originally planned, when a woman came up to her as she stood in line for a bus ticket.

“Are you Aloy?” the woman asked.

Aloy’s heart skipped several beats before she saw the resemblance between this woman and the young boy she’d met in Laredo. She had a scar over her eye and her hair was darker and less curly, but her eyes were as striking as his had been: fierce, bright, and a yellow-green that reminded Aloy of buffalo grass catching early morning sunlight.

“Yes,” Aloy said softly, looking around them and then guiding the woman away from the crowd of people in the Greyhound station. “You must be Solai.”

The woman nodded. “Yan called me to tell me to find you. He said you’re looking for Nakoa.”

“Anything you can tell me stays between us,” Aloy said, levelling her eyes on the woman.

Those bright eyes looked for a moment as though they were filling with tears. But Solai fought them back and spoke quickly. “I gave her some cash and a bus ticket. She was headed for Houston looking for Zaid; nothing I could say would stop her.”

“What can you tell me about where she might be in Houston? What do you know about Zaid’s whereabouts?”

“Zaid isn’t his real name. No one who’s met him has made it out of, I don’t think anyone knows who he really is or what he looks like.” She shook her head, looking away as if lost in a terrible memory. “He works with the smugglers, finds vulnerable people trying to cross the border, and takes them where no one sees them ever again.” Her voice seemed to die in her throat as she added, “He murdered my brother, Nakoa’s father.”

Aloy winced involuntarily, feeling the pain in the words as if it was her own. “I assume he’s been reported to the Houston police?” Aloy said, though of course she knew the answer.

Solai looked at her deadpan, blinking slowly as if she didn’t understand the words Aloy had said.

“Right,” Aloy said with a sigh.

Solai reached into her purse and pulled out a long snap wallet. “Here,” she fumbled with the contents for a moment before handing a small square of glossy paper out for Aloy to take, which she did. It was a photo; Solai was on the right, at least a year or so younger than she was now, her arms thrown tightly around a younger woman, kissing her cheek. The young woman was smiling into the camera, and Aloy could tell she was the one holding it. “That’s her,” Solai said, pointing to the smiling woman. “It’s as recent a photo as I have. She took a few when she was here, but all the texts I’ve gotten from her since have been from new numbers I don’t recognize. Mr I haven't gotten one of those in days. I don’t know if she lost her phone or if she turned it off or…” Her voice trailed off, and Aloy heard her swallow thickly. She reached back into her wallet and pulled out some neatly folded bills, forcing them into Aloy’s hand.

Aloy shook her head, “I’m fine. I don’t need--”

“Please,” the woman whispered, her eyes wide, her hands shaking as they clasped over Aloy’s. “I shouldn’t have let her go.” Her words were cracking, slowly breaking her. “Even as I begged her not to go, part of me wanted her to.” She did not fight the tears now, but they did not muddle her speech. “I need him dead as much as she does.”

Slowly, Aloy nodded, though she felt hot bile rising in her throat. “I understand better than you think,” she said flatly. _Better, clearly, than you do_. She looked down at the smiling woman in the photo. She couldn’t be much older than Aloy was. If they had grown up together, they might have been friends.

Her eyes were the bright, flashing buffalo grass, too. Aloy found herself drowning in them as she walked to the back of the ticket line.


	2. Why Am I Still Doing This?

The phone menu was a joke. Aloy had been passed from one operator to another until she finally just gave up and walked down to the station herself. “She’s my cousin,” she told the clerk at the desk. “I’m all she has.” She maybe should have tried for a more sympathetic approach: pulled out some tears, acted hysterical, spoken in rapid, nearly incoherent Spanish. But everything told her that even false weakness was a liability around these people. Instead, she chose lies and strength, clothing that came more naturally to her anyway.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” the clerk said, and she did look it, for whatever that was worth. “This is just the records department. If you’d like to speak with an officer, you need to use the white phone on the wall there.” She pointed awkwardly from behind the glass, directing Aloy around the corner. An old landline, straight out of 90’s teen sitcoms, hung there with a faded sign taped above it that read “Pick up the receiver and press 4 for dispatch” in Times New Roman.

“Thanks,” Aloy said over her shoulder as she walked over to the phone. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear, but there was no dial tone. She pressed the button shortly and heard the reassuring beepback, and then a series of clicks, and then a man’s voice.

“Hello, my name is Balahn. Is this an emergency?” He sounded calm, unfazed, unimpressed.

“Hi, yes, it’s my cousin,” Aloy said, putting on as much confidence as she thought would suit her situation. “I need to report her missing.”

“What’s her name?”

“Nakoa Amer.”

“Date of birth?”

Aloy hesitated. “I don’t know the day,” she said. “But I know it was 1998. She’s twenty or twenty-one.”

“Okay, so I’m seeing that she’s already in our system,” Balahn said, still emotionless. 

“What?” Aloy said, her breath catching in her throat. “What do you mean? Why? When?”

She heard him clicking and tapping on a keyboard in the background. Her heart was racing. “It looks like she was brought in a couple of days ago on assault charges.” 

“Assault charges?” She barely kept herself from shouting into the receiver. “Is she in jail or something?”

“It looks like the charges were dropped and she was released. She was only here a couple of hours.”

A rock fell to the bottom of Aloy’s stomach. “What address is listed for her?” she said, grasping wildly at fluttering wings of quick-escaping information.

“Uh, looks like 16222 North Freeway,” he said. “Number 15.”

Aloy snatched the pen that was chained to the records’ desk and scrawled the address on the back of her hand, near her thumb. “Thank you,” she said. Without waiting for a response, she hung up.

She pulled the address up on her phone.  _ A Super 8 _ , she thought to herself.  _ That’s not ominous or anything _ . It would take two hours by train, but Aloy needed to save her Lyft credits in case she needed a clean getaway, so she had no easy alternatives. She pulled out the photo Solai had given her. The corners had worn down a bit as it rubbed against her pocket, but the yellow-green eyes still stared up at her with a clarity that caught like a hook in her gut.

She should have been in Austin by now. More than once she’d chided herself for offering to help that useless boy in Laredo and his useless aunt who were both happy to let anyone else get their hands dirty. But when Aloy looked in the picture of those eyes, she felt a pressing need to see them for real. She needed to meet their shining ferocity, to remind herself that some people in this world still cared about the things that mattered. To rinse the taste of her own border crossing from her mouth. To feel like this whole journey was worth it, that it would make a difference.

With her thumb, Aloy absently rubbed the thick dark hair, pulled back in the picture from the smiling face, framed awkwardly off-center by someone who wasn’t able to line up the shot.  _ I’m just as bad as they are _ , she thought to herself.  _ I’m using her, too _ . She gritted her teeth against the encroaching guilt.  _ I’ll get her out. I’ll help her get where she needs to go. Then we’ll be even. _ The hook caught her in the gut again as she slid the photo back into her pocket.  _ She can use me, too _ .


	3. No Animal Deserves to Suffer

The light pierced Nakoa’s eyes like a blade, and she lowered her face to her hands involuntarily, the zip ties biting into her wrists. She could hear the others’ voices all around her, murmuring wordlessly, reacting to whatever it was that had created the light. She felt cool air rush past her ears, pushing away the stale smell of overripe bodies.

Before her vision had adjusted, she felt cool hands on her arms. She instinctively pulled away.

“No, Nakoa, it’s okay.” The voice was unfamiliar. The accent was very familiar. Nakoa blinked hard and rapidly, willing her eyes back to functioning. “Yan sent me to find you. I’m getting you out.” She felt a small knife begin to saw away at the dense plastic tying her hands. “We can talk more once we get everyone out of this van.”

Finally, the woman’s face was visible, though deeply silhouetted by the open back doors. Barely tamed dark hair, streaked through with vibrant red, framed what had to be the most beautiful face Nakoa had ever seen. There was a small cut by her chin and a bruise over her left eye, and Nakoa didn’t recognize her, but it took everything she had to keep her hands still and her spine solid as the woman cut her bonds.

“I don’t believe it,” she said without thinking. “One of his prayers finally worked.” She rubbed her wrists deeply, feeling the hot sting of raw skin.

The woman gave a small smile. “I’ve got the key,” she said, pulling a cord out from beneath her shirt. On it hung the small, insignifiant pieces of metal that were the difference between freedom and death for everyone sitting in the van with them.

“I’ll help the others,” Nakoa said, pulling one of the keys from the cord. “Let’s go.” She crawled numbly around the trembling bodies until she came to the end of the vinyl coated chain where the large padlock hung, holding the long line of hands in place against the wall. When it fell, she saw the woman, now standing outside the back of the van, quickly pulling the chain through. Nakoa helped the other captives push themselves out of the darkness into the fresh air. The zip ties were still in place, but they could run.

Nakoa looked around her, trying to get her bearings. She and the beautiful woman stood in the vast, mostly empty parking lot of a Wal-Mart. She had been blinded by the light from an overhead high-density lamp. Encircling them from every direction were shadows concealed on the very edge of the lamp’s circle.

“I knew you were going to be trouble,” a deep, terrible voice came from the darkness. “But you’ll make it worth our while in the end.”

Blood rose hot and thick to the space just behind Nakoa’s eyes. She was momentarily blinded by it, the scene in front of her replaced with the memory of her father’s mutilated face staring sightlessly up at her from the crack in the cellar door.

“The end is now, Zaid, for you and your men.” The woman’s voice was strong and loud and sure and Nakoa wanted to tackle her, to slam her to the ground and save her perfect face and deep, wonderful eyes, and then run and jam her thumbs into the eyes of the invisible voice she knew all too well.

Out of the shadows rushed bodies, four or five of them, straight for Nakoa and the woman standing next to her. Nakoa felt her muscles, sore from days spent hunched in the back of a hot, musky van, spring to action before she even knew what was happening. A big man lunged at her, the knife in his hand aiming down at her throat. She threw her whole body weight behind her arm, forcing his blow to glance past her shoulder, and then, as he was off balance, she thrust the heel of her hand into his nose and heard the satisfying crunch followed by a guttural and gurgling scream. He fell to the ground beside her at the same time as the man who had charged the other woman fell limply down beneath him.

 _Two down_.

She knew at least Zaid had to have a gun, but she didn’t know how many others were leveling their aim on her. A huge mass slammed into her shoulder, sending her careening into the ground. Her hands scraped sharply against gravel as she barely caught herself before her head hit the asphalt, and she looked up just in time to roll herself out of the way of the body bearing down on her. He grabbed at her ankle and she used her free foot to kick the side of his face, turning his neck sharply and toppling him to the ground next to her. She pushed herself to stand and looked wildly around her for the next attacker.

The area around the van was strewn with men’s bodies, some moaning and struggling to right themselves, others eerily still and silent. The woman was off to the side, having chased one of the men as he fled. She stood with her foot pinning his chest to the ground, and Nakoa could see the man’s leg sticking crookedly out from his body, a bone visible just below the knee. The woman was pointing his own gun back at him. She turned to look at Nakoa, her deep, searching eyes making a wordless offer.

Nakoa stepped up next to her and took the gun from her. She did not hesitate, and as he lay whimpering there, a different memory of her father’s face swam before her.

 _No matter how much it might tempt you,_ he had said, and at the time she’d thought he was being over dramatic as he taught her how to snap the chickens’ necks, _no animal deserves to suffer. Always keep your kills clean._

One sharp, stinging _pop!_ cut through the air, and his body relaxed completely and immediately. Nakoa forced herself to turn away from the blood as it flowed freely from the hole in his head.

Her breath came heavy and slow, and she could feel the adrenaline of shock thinning in her blood. Her shoulders threatened to shake with dry sobs of frantic emotion, so she dropped her arms to her sides and flicked on the gun’s safety before it was too late.

“You gave him a better death than he deserved,” she heard the woman say. Her smooth, low voice held Nakoa tight and pulled her slowly and patiently back into her body.

“It’s what my father would have wanted,” she heard herself say, “for me.”

“How did you find him?” she asked.

Nakoa looked into her eyes and tried to focus there. “All these men worked with the smugglers who cross the river regularly. They’d had an in with someone in border patrol, or at least someone who lied his way into a uniform.” She glanced down at Zaid, and then quickly back up as she felt her stomach lurch dangerously. “I recognized him as soon as I saw him. I shouldn’t have attacked him, but then when I was sitting in jail, I thought that at least if I got a trial I had a chance at justice.”

“But then he dropped the charges.”

“And demanded I be released immediately. Told the officers ‘it was all a big misunderstanding.’” She flinched at the memory of walking out of the jail to find him standing there, his expression daring her to cry foul. “He was wearing the uniform. I knew they wouldn’t believe me.”

“Did he bring you back to the motel?”

Nakoa shook her head. “He’d figured out I was staying there and tied me up in the bathroom. Told me he’d sell me to some rich family to be a maid. I didn’t think he was serious.” She swallowed hard. “I thought for sure he had...different plans.”

Almost without warning, the woman brought her hand to Nakoa’s face and turned her gingerly to the side. “These bruises,” she said, “did you get a concussion?”

Nakoa couldn’t speak, so she just shook her head slowly.

A siren swelled in the distance, and Nakoa was snapped from her reverie.

“Quick,” the woman said, her hand flying down to grab Nakoa’s. “I know a safehouse. It’s not far, but we’ll have to stay off the main roads.”

Nakoa’s feet pounded the ground beneath her. She’d never run so fast for so long. But she’d also never been fueled so thoroughly by so many competing emotions.

 

* * *

 

It was well past midnight when Nakoa and the beautiful woman crept up the back steps of a house Nakoa didn't recognize in a part of town where Nakoa had never been. The porch light was not on, but through the lace curtains of the kitchen window, she could see at least one figure sitting at a table just inside.

The beautiful woman was about to knock when Nakoa reached out and carefully grabbed her cool hand. They were both panting slightly, their skin shining with sweat in the late spring humidity. Nakoa whispered, "Wait."

The woman turned and looked at her with confusion.

"I don't even know who you are," she said, hoping she kept the desperation from her voice.

"My name is Aloy," she said simply, which really explained nothing.

"You're from Laredo?"

"I passed through on my way north. That's how I met your brother."

Nakoa was aware that the figure inside had probably heard their voices by now. But she also knew, from the way Aloy was standing, the way she had not moved her pack from her shoulder, the way she held herself like a docent in an art museum, pointing Nakoa to a painting she herself had seen a thousand times and was no longer interested in, that Aloy was leaving her here.

"Where will you go next?" she asked finally, which was not the way she would have worded the question if she were, in general, a braver person.

Aloy seemed to consider her for a moment. "Austin," she said. "I have things I need to do there." Her eyes flashed, and Nakoa thought she might have seen something burning there, but then it disappeared. "What about you?"

Nakoa was taken aback by the mundanity of the question, and the fact that she didn't have a ready answer. "I think I'll stay long enough to make sure the other captives are safe," she heard herself say. It was as good an answer as she could have hoped to come up with in the spot.

"Will you go back to Mexico?"

Nakoa was sure her face gave away how ridiculous that sentence sounded to her. "Will you?"

Aloy gave a small laugh, and Nakoa definitely saw it this time. It was small, barely a spark, but Nakoa let it light a candle in her that she would hold dearly and shield from any and every wind. It was a smile that said "I understand better than you think." And Nakoa believed it.


	4. While I'm Waiting...

It wasn't clear to Aloy how much time had passed since she'd left Houston. She'd found a place to stay, such as it was, and every day since had felt like an endless parade of increasingly dangerous obstacles. 

It started benign enough; she didn't have many leads on where to find Helis or how to stop his underground network, so she'd taken on odd jobs around the neighborhood. Just some things to keep her busy, and give her opportunities to collect information. The Hope Lutheran Church asked if she would help with some of the cleanup that needed to be done at the new homes of some of their recent immigrants. That was easy enough, and gave Aloy a better understanding of the city. A wealthy Anglo woman asked for help finding a stolen family heirloom, and though the woman's thinly veiled racism had made Aloy's skin crawl, the generous offer for compensation had been too good to pass up. But then that search led to an infuriating Antifa group, and her association with them burned some of her bridges in the more reputable quarters. 

Regardless, now her reputation was getting out of control. Word had somehow spread that she was capable and willing to listen, and people now boldly approached her at the grocery store, the taqueria, and even the bar she and Erend would go to on Friday nights. And that's how she came to be in a suspiciously sticky booth, leaning as far as she dared over the table, straining to hear the soft voice of the man seated across from her. 

“Leave me alone, girl,” he hissed at her, slurring his words heavily.

“You came to her…” Erend said, raising an eyebrow and looking between the man and Aloy. Aloy waved her hand, shushing him.

“You were saying about the river,” Aloy urged him on. “Are you afraid she jumped to her death?”

“I don’t know.” His anguished scream had no voice, like misting rain without thunder. “Elida, my only daughter.” He shook his head before knocking back the last of his drink. “She’s gone.”

“Who else is looking for her?”

“I put in a missing person’s report yesterday, but they said they hadn’t taken her off their runaway list since the last time she left. That was weeks ago. If they were supposed to be looking for her this whole time, they are obviously shit at it.” He looked down at the cell phone in his hand. “I made sure all her friends had my number and that they’d call me if they saw her...but nothing has come of that so far. And they said they hadn’t seen her in weeks, anyway.” He shook his head again, his short, unwashed hair falling into his eyes.

“Has she done or said anything unusual recently?” Aloy asked. “You said she ran away before. Where did she go then?”

“She went to a friend’s house. They were going to get an uber pool to Waco, of all places until they realized they didn’t have the money. His mom eventually called me and told me to pick her up.”

“That was one of the friends you gave your number to?” Aloy’s brow was furrowed, and she might have been taking notes if she thought it would have helped at all. He was giving her nothing.

“I tried them first, as soon as I figured out she was gone. But I can’t find him or his mom now,” the man said. “The number that called me is disconnected now, and someone else lives in the apartment now.” His face went dark and his eyes glassed over as he marched backwards in his memory. “She’s been like a different person. She used to be such a happy girl, playing in the dirt with the boys.”

Aloy felt goosebumps spread across the skin of her bared shoulders. “What changed?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh that was half a hiccup. “She disagrees with me about everything. She’ll pick fights with me about politics; immigration, Donald Trump, even local elections. We never used to fight.” He looked down at his hands gripping the empty glass tightly. “It’s been a month since I’ve seen her smile. She spends so much time in her room. I should have paid more attention.”

Aloy narrowed her eyes. “Has something happened in the news recently that upset her?”

“The news is upsetting for all of us,” he said, looking at her like she was an idiot. “That school shooting in Santa Fe last year got everyone on edge, and the neo-nazi demonstrations are frightening, even if they’re not happening around here. There’s sort of a calm before the storm now, between elections, but Elida broods more than ever. It bothers her that people are so divided.”

This was getting Aloy nowhere. “Where did you last see her?”

“Just Wednesday night,” he said, “at our house. She seemed...withdrawn, sad. She said she wanted to sit outside on the porch for a while, and it was a nice night, so I just hoped it would help. Later I must have fallen asleep on the couch or something, because I woke up the next morning and couldn’t find her.” His eyes were filling with tears, which Aloy didn’t have patience for.

“I know some people. I’ll see what I can find out,” she said simply, sliding out of the booth and walking to the door with fluid movement. She didn’t wait as she heard the man calling after her; she heard Erend intercept him. Hopefully the two of them would distract each other enough that she could avoid both of them for the rest of the night.

Even in the humid night air, Aloy felt a chill crawl up her back. A couple small groups of smokers stood out on the curb, nursing the short-term friendships that it seemed only cigarettes could create. Aloy’s eyes glanced over them quickly, but recognized none of them. For weeks she’d been doing that: studying the faces of strangers, not really knowing what she was looking for, and never finding it anyway. 

She pulled the roll of nickels out of her purse and slid it neatly into her fist before walking out into the semi-dark of the street lamps. There were a few people she could talk to tonight, just to rule them out, but mostly she just had to hope Elida would stay put until morning, when it would be easier to search properly. With any luck, the police would find her first, or one of her friends. There weren’t as many legal consequences to be worried about in this situation. Elida wasn’t Nakoa.

_ Nakoa _ .

The sudden memory of the woman in Houston almost startled Aloy as she continued down the barely-lit street. She hadn’t thought about the encounter in a long time; in fact, she had actively avoided thinking about it. Avoided the images burned into her mind of the bruises and deep etches left on Nokoa’s wrists, avoided the icy, emotionless words Nokoa had murmured over Zaid’s lifeless body, avoided the instant feeling of kinship Aloy had felt deep in her gut when she saw Nokoa’s pain and satisfaction mingle with remorse and disgust. Revenge was a dirty business, and it never brought healing. 

Aloy had fought herself for weeks, banishing the memory of Nokoa’s disappointment and loneliness.  _ I don’t even know who you are. _ Aloy thought then there was more than a statement there, but a plea, a hope, perhaps for more than just a name whispered into the dark. Aloy had known if she didn’t leave immediately, if she stayed at the safehouse even just long enough to get everyone settled, she might never leave. She might still be in Houston now, leaving her path for someone else to follow. All the people she had helped in Austin would still be stumbling around, trying and failing to solve their own problems. And Aloy had to remind herself that she  _ did _ care about that, she  _ did _ want to make the whole world better, not just her own little life. So she pushed down the memories of that night, of that woman, of the possibilities that had been briefly laid out before her.

Now they all came flooding back and it was all Aloy could do to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, forcing herself back behind the cracking mask of single-mindedness she had been wearing since she left Mexico.  _ Where is Nokoa now _ , she tried not to wonder.  _ Is she safe _ , she tried not to ask.  _ Has she found new people to replace everything she’s lost _ , she tried not to care. 

Elida needed Aloy now. It was Elida she needed to be concerned about. Aloy looked around her and was surprised to find that her feet had guided her to one of the houses she’d been meaning to visit. The porchlight was on and, even at this late hour, the cool, flickering light of a television could be seen behind the thin curtains. Aloy quietly thanked her body for doing what her mind could not as she walked up to the front door and tapped four times loudly and twice more quietly. She heard a creak of springs and several soft foot falls and then saw a figure silhouetted in the small window to the side of the door. Aloy couldn’t see where the person could look out and determine who was standing on the mat, but Aloy knew there was likely a small space that concealed the looker and revealed the guest, so she waited for the recognition and then heard the deadbolt slide out of the lock.

“It’s late,” the small woman’s voice came from the crack she had created between the door and the frame. Aloy could see she had left the chain on.

“A girl is missing,” Aloy said. “A teenager. She was trying to get to Waco. Have you heard anything about it?”

The woman’s face softened and she crossed herself, but she shook her head. “God save her,” she whispered simply.

“Thank you,” Aloy said, turning away.  _ And when he doesn’t, I’ll be left to clean up the mess _ , she thought miserably as she rolled her eyes involuntarily. She heard the door click shut behind her and the bolt slide back into place.

She walked on, going in and out of the light of the streetlamps like the darkness was water and she could only sometimes come up for air. What would make a girl  _ want _ to go to Waco? There was a puzzle here and Aloy was missing some pieces. Sure, not every teenager read the police blotter, but some of the stories had to have made it to the more popular news outlets. The spa where the women had been kidnapped and forced to offer “happy endings” to the massage clients that came in? Certainly that had made it to a newspaper or TV or something. The search for the man who had been charged with five separate counts of kidnapping, continued child abuse, and indecency with children had definitely been covered by more than one station, and had lasted weeks. Could a girl like Elida really be so naive as to think it couldn’t happen to her? Did she really believe her white skin or her citizenship status protected her somehow, as if being lost and alone wouldn’t make her vulnerable enough under even the best circumstances? 

Aloy stopped walking, cold fear like water pouring over her. Was Elida running from something so awful she couldn’t think about the dangers that might intercept her? Maybe the man back at the bar--as blundering and useless as he was, obviously lacking any overarching plan, let alone a malicious one--was unaware of horrors that his daughter was already facing. Maybe she really believed the unknown and unpredictable could only be better than whatever she was leaving behind. 

Aloy shuddered at the thought, forcing herself to continue down the sidewalk. She gripped the roll of coins more tightly in her fist, glancing around in the darkness, as if the things haunting Elida might be lying in wait to ambush her, too.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so maybe this is a bit deep/dark for a fanfiction, but it’s something that weighs pretty heavily on my mind. I want to make sure the resources for reporting and preventing human trafficking are available to everyone, and that everyone is aware of how prevalent and terrible the reality of human trafficking is. It’s not just happening in impoverished countries with few resources to combat it, but also in countries like the US, where people are lulled into a false sense of security while vulnerable people, including and even especially children, are preyed upon every day.
> 
>  
> 
> To help out/find out more, check out the following websites:  
> https://www.worldschildren.org/trafficking-guide?gclid=CjwKCAjw0ZfoBRB4EiwASUMdYccWaOFtMobobCfTfklfJT9-XYv4eZV76OfS6s5FflWFR2sm5iCQLRoCWyAQAvD_BwE --international resources and information
> 
>  
> 
> https://unboundnow.org/ --Texas-specific, Waco especially
> 
>  
> 
> https://www.waco-texas.com/Police/pdf/Trafficking%20-%20WACO%20PD.pdf -- that’s a pdf, but especially useful if you’re in central or southern Texas


	5. Learning from Juliet

The tinny rattling sound coming from beneath the passenger side of the car grated more than usual in Aloy’s ears as she sat idling in the lot outside the Chick-fil-A. Aloy worried the still undiagnosed noise had to be loud enough to draw the attention of anyone who might be on the other side of that “Staff Only” back door. But it was important that Aloy not find herself with an engine that wouldn’t turn over, in case Elida bolted.

Even at this weird interim time between a normal person’s lunch and dinner, the drive-thru line was long and moving steadily forward. So when the door opened a crack and a skinny little girl slipped out, her visor pulled low over her eyes, Aloy almost missed her. She sat up straighter and watched as the girl glanced around her and then darted across the lot and into the beater parked two spots over. As she fumbled with her keys, Aloy opened her door and stood up in one smooth motion.

“Elida,” she called out. 

The girl’s back was to her; Aloy saw the long ponytail of rich, golden hair spilling out over the top of the back of the visor. When Aloy called her name, she jumped visibly and turned around, her eyes wide and scared.

“Who are you?” she called out, her words catching in her throat. Then her expression softened like melting wax. “Did Atral send you?”

Aloy’s eyebrow quirked, but she tried to hide it. “My name is Aloy,” she said. “Can I talk to you?” She raised her empty hands in a gesture of surrender and she nodded towards the Starbucks on the corner. “Just for a minute.”

Elida looked uncertain, and she hovered near the handle of her car door, the key an inch from the lock.

“I’ll give you quarters for a washateria,” Aloy said with a hopeful smirk.

Elida looked down at the thick, red polo she had on, and ran a hand absently over her ponytail. Then she smiled and looked back up at Aloy. “Heh, you got me pegged. Okay.” She slid her keys back into the little backpack hanging from her shoulder.

The coffee shop had a more respectable crowd size, given the time, and Aloy was confident that they would be neither observed nor overheard. “Are you a coffee person or an espresso person?” Aloy said, gesturing for Elida to grab a chair in the corner. “My treat.”

Elida’s eyes brightened. “A mocha frappe would be amazing,” she said. “It’s so hot.”

Aloy shrugged. “Gimme a second.”

When she’d put in their order she grabbed a couple straws and went to sit across from the young woman seated uncomfortably at the table. 

“So…” Elida accepted the straw and immediately began fiddling with the wrapper. “Have you heard from Atral?”

“Me first,” Aloy said quickly, playing it as cool as she could. “Why Temple?” she asked, looking around her as if the city stretched out at her feet, revealing its weird, Texan townie underbelly.

Elida pulled a corner of the paper off the straw and rolled it around in her fingers. “I just wanted to get away,” she said. “To be alone.”

“Do you know your dad thinks you’re dead?” Aloy said, feeling like she was dropping a bomb.

Elida just shrugged. “I’m surprised he would even notice I was gone.”

Aloy recognized the dark thread weaving through the words. Not so thick as to confirm her worst suspicions, but stronger still than she was comfortable with. “He’s got the whole city looking for you. He’s worried.”

“Mocha Frappe and Cold Brew for Allie?” the barista behind the counter called out as she set the cups down on top of the receipt.

Aloy nodded and Elida joined her in retrieving their drinks. “Well, now you can tell him I’m here. I have a job and an apartment and he doesn’t need to worry about me.” She took a deep sip of her frozen drink. “I’ll call him as soon as I have enough to get a real phone plan with minutes and all that.”

“You can use my phone, if you want,” Aloy suggested, pulling it out of her back pocket as they sat back down at the table. “Maybe set up a time over the weekend to meet for lunch or something?”

Elida’s eyes widened. “Oh, no,” she sputtered. “I...that’s okay. I’ll just...use my roommate’s phone later. It’s fine.”

“It’s really no problem,” Aloy said, pulling up her contacts. “He actually gave me his number in case I found you.”

Elida shook her head quickly, but put her words together slowly. “I think he’s probably at work right now. Really, I’ll call him later.”

Aloy poised with her finger over the  _ Send _ button, raising both her eyebrows at Elida. “Are you sure?” she said significantly, wiggling her phone slightly in Elida’s direction. “Will you call him before or after you hear from Atral?”

Elida’s face went ashen, and then splotchy red patches lit up her cheeks. “Well...uh…” Aloy watched her swallow whatever excuse had come to mind. “For Chrissake,” she said in a low, wistful exhale. “I don’t know where he is.”

Aloy leaned in. “Was he supposed to be here in Temple?”

“He sent me a snap last week telling me to meet him up here for the weekend, at our normal spot, but I got here last Thursday and he’s not here.”

Aloy sighed. “What is ‘your normal spot’?’ she asked, not sure she really wanted to know.

She thought she saw Elida’s face go a deeper shade of red, if that was possible. “Just a...a place on Belton Lake.” She took a breath, as if to steady herself. “Our families used to go there, separately, when we were kids.” Her eyes went glassy and she looked to the side, as if she were reliving whatever memory she was imagining. “After he left, I’d go back there on my own sometimes. One day I...surprised him there.” She gave a little smile. “He was...so excited to see me. Mostly we just hung out, played, goofed off like we did when we were kids. But…” her eyes darkened. “We aren’t kids anymore. All the stuff with ICE and his mom...it changed him.” Aloy could see the ghost of tears welling up in her eyes. “Those early raids changed everyone, really.”

_ Sure they did _ , Aloy thought bitterly, but bit her tongue.

“We started meeting here in secret. We’d talk for hours, make our meals over a campfire...spend the nights in the little tent and sleeping bag I brought from my dad’s…” Her eyelids fluttered suddenly, and she looked away. “He’d snap me when he could get away from his foster parents for a couple days. Then it would be the longest weeks of my life until he’d be able to slip away again. I couldn’t wait to see him. I’m dead and I only come alive when I’m here with him. Do you know what that’s like?”

Aloy’s first instinct was to scoff, to roll her eyes, or worse, to lay into this girl who didn’t know what death was, who wouldn’t know real pain if it woke her in the middle of the night with its hands over her mouth and a knife at her throat.

But then, unbidden, bright, flashing buffalo-grass eyes swam in front of her and she felt a burning deep within her that could somehow understand Elida’s words in a way Aloy herself couldn’t.

“No...I can’t say that I do,” she lied.

”Last time we got together, he told me they were going to kick him out when he turned 18, so I told him I’d move up here and we could both get jobs and live together. When he snapped me last week, I had a bag all ready to go, and I had already asked my manager to transfer me up here. She didn’t even ask why.”

Aloy shook her head. “He hasn’t come.”

“I’ve been staying put all weekend, hoping he’d show. You’re the first person I’ve seen who recognized me. I thought maybe…”

“Why didn’t you just tell your father about him?”

She looked like a balloon poked by a tiny pin as she slouched so slowly she didn’t seem to notice. “Dad doesn’t understand,” she said quietly. “He voted for Trump.”

Aloy knew her expression was not the empathetic veneer Elida wanted, but she couldn’t help her deadpan. “All right,” she said, and her voice sounded brassier than she’d intended. “You have to go back.”

Elida shook her head frantically. “No! You can’t send me back!”

“Yeah, I know, and I won’t,” Aloy said, softening her demeanor as best she knew how. “But your father is seriously worried about you, and the police are looking for you. You’re obviously low on money, probably haven’t bathed in a week, and Atral isn’t coming. You should go home. Shower. Eat a good meal.” She glanced over her shoulder and out the window. “You could probably keep the job up here. The commute’s probably comparable to most people’s, though the pay isn’t really worth it.”

Elida’s eyes filled with tears; she found her drink and sipped it to give herself something to do. Aloy could feel her cracking. 

“Don’t give up on your little dream,” she said, and then vaguely regretted the patronizing choice of words. “Just put it off until you’ve got a better plan under your feet. And some more money.”

Elida nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess it was pretty crazy for me to just drop everything and run up here.”

“You have no fucking idea how crazy it was.” Aloy couldn’t stop herself. Elida’s eyes widened at her words, so Aloy added a half-hearted smile to the end of her sentence.

“What about Atral?” Elida asked quietly. “His foster family is up in Waco. He hasn’t been responding to my texts.”

Aloy nodded. “I’ll find him if I can, if you go home to your father.”

“I will.” She dabbed at the streak a tear had left on her cheek. “But please, come find me there. I can’t sleep.” She closed her eyes tightly, as if blocking out some terror. “I can’t breathe knowing Atral could be out there...lost…”

“Now here,” Aloy unlocked her phone and pressed the  _ Send  _ button that still hovered near her finger, “talk to your dad so he calls off the dogs.”

Elida gave a small smile and took the phone as Aloy passed it over. “Thank you,” she said, sliding out of her chair and walking off towards the front window of the shop, still holding her drink in her other hand.

Aloy leaned back and took a deep breath, feeling the knot in her chest loosen slightly.  _ One down _ , she thought to herself.  _ Just, like, a half a million or so to go _ . She brought her straw to her lips and sipped the bitter, watery coffee, her eyes floating closed. She’d worked hard for her six hours a night, but she didn’t feel like it was paying off. Every day around this time she could feel her body aching for a bed. Or a couch. Or even just a spot on the floor out of the way somewhere, where no one would ask her for anything for a couple of hours and she could just slip a way for a little bit.

“Aloy?” A voice pierced through her greedily hoarded solitude. A voice she recognized.

Her eyes shot open.

Standing behind the travel mugs, as though she had been about to step up to the counter, was a tall, lean woman with dark brown hair, sun streaked through the strands hanging around her face. She wore a t-shirt and long, black jeans, and shoes that looked worn and were untied. But it was her eyes that held Aloy’s.

“Nakoa,” she breathed, sitting up straight so fast she hit the leg of the table. She swore under her breath as she rubbed her knee.  _ Please come over here _ , she thought desperately,  _ please don’t let me walk away again _ .

Nakoa stood stock still, frozen in place by an inner tumult Aloy could read on her face, but not translate. Was it fear? Aloy’s heart fell, and she could feel a little brick wall building itself up around her.

But then Nakoa, giving a meaningless glance at the barista, crossed the room in two strides and slid into Elida’s vacated seat. “What are you doing here?” She whispered as she leaned in close, putting the full weight of her concern on her forearms as they rested on the tabletop.

Aloy didn’t know what made her do it, anymore than she knew what made her keep the picture in her wallet, but when she leaned in and took Nakoa’s hands in her own, their warmth spread into her fingers and seemed to seep through her body like ink in water. Nakoa’s eyes fluttered down for an almost imperceptible flash, and when they came back to meet Aloy’s they burned with the brightness that had been quietly fueling Aloy for weeks.

“I was looking for someone,” Aloy said, gesturing slightly to Elida, who was still on the phone by the door. “Now I’m looking for someone else,” she said with a small laugh. “What are you doing here?”

_ What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck? _ Aloy’s thoughts were a mixture of terror, excitement, and a deep, fearful insistence that her hands not choose now to start sweating.

"I was actually just dropping off the last of the group from…" her voice faltered and she blinked rapidly, but she pushed through. "From the van. He has cousins in Temple." 

“That’s great,” Aloy breathed. “Did you resettle all of those people?”

Nakoa bit her lip. “More or less, I guess,” she hedged. “A few of them were just runaways that needed rides home.”

“How far did you have to go?”

Nakoa thought for a second. “One boy was from around Tulsa. That was a trek.”

“You drove him all the way there?” Aloy’s rattling car was a recent acquisition, so she was more familiar with Greyhound travel times, but still, a trip all the way up to Tulsa and back had to have taken at least a full day, not counting any stops they’d had to make for gas or other passengers.

“It was the least I could do,” she said with a small shrug, but Aloy saw pink creep into her cheeks. 

Aloy didn’t say anything. She could hardly think anything. All this time, uncountable time, she’d been either imagining this moment or doing everything in her power not to, which amounted to about the same thing: the most meaningful parts of her existence felt wrapped up in the hands that right now were holding hers, in the lithe arms that seemed to be full of anxious energy that flexed and relaxed in turn, in the bright eyes that flashed at her in a sort of dance that Aloy desperately wanted to learn. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, but half of them didn’t feel right and the other half were too frightening. So instead, she just fumbled with the air behind her lips and stared uselessly into Nakoa’s face, willing her to make the choices she didn’t dare make herself.

“Aloy?” 

That damned kid. At the sound of Elida’s voice, Aloy felt her whole body seize up like an electric shock had just coursed through her hands down to her toes. She pushed herself away from Nakoa too quickly and too far and felt the chair beneath her scratch a loud rap against the floor.

“Yes,” Aloy said, quickly looking up at Elida, as if everything up until then had been deliberate. At first, Elida looked surprised, even worried. Then after a moment, what Aloy saw in the young girl’s eyes made her feel like she was going to vomit. She smirked, in this small, knowing way and Aloy wanted to smack the stupid look off her face. “Elida, hi. Got everything worked out with your dad?”

Elida nodded, still smiling. “Yes. He told me to thank you for him.”

Aloy scratched the back of her neck absently. “It was nothing,” she said quickly, staring just past Elida’s shoulder. “You made the decision to go home. I just gave you the opportunity.”

“About that,” Elida said, and Aloy heard the smile fall from her face. “Before I go back, I want to show you the spot where Atral and I usually meet. In case he shows up there after I leave.”

Aloy blinked. “Oh, right. Sure. That’s cool.” She didn’t want to look at Nakoa, but she didn’t want to not look at Nakoa, but she desperately didn’t want Nakoa to look at her, but she did sort of want her to. Her eyes didn’t give her a choice as they wandered back into the Nakoa’s merciless grip. For a second, her mind was completely blank and the silence between the three of them pounded down on Aloy like water pressure at the bottom of the ocean.  _ Fuck fuck fuck… _

“I’m Nakoa,” she said, taking her eyes off Aloy and holding her hand out for Elida to shake.

“Elida,” she said, taking it. “It’s nice to meet you. How do you know Aloy?”

Aloy heard the sugary coyness in her voice and felt her own face burn with sudden loathing.

“Friends from home,” Nakoa said simply. Her voice was so even, her face so natural. Aloy hated how hard this was for her and how easy it seemed to be for Nakoa. Her stomach was churning and her heart was racing and it was all for nothing. “And you?”

Elida smiled at Aloy, but not the obnoxious Mona Lisa smile. It was genuine and warm, and it caught Aloy off guard. “She was just knocking some sense into me,” she said quietly. “I needed it.”

Aloy could feel Nakoa looking at her, and could feel her own eyes drawing themselves back to hers, and she just barely caught herself and looked at Elida instead. “You should get going or you’ll hit the worst of rush hour on the way back,” she said. “Can you drop a pin on my phone where the meeting spot is?”

Elida looked down at the phone in her hand, and then glanced quickly at Nakoa. “It’s a campsite,” she said, tapping on the phone screen a few times to pull up a map and show it to Aloy. “I have number twelve right now, booked through to next Monday. I can just leave the tent and stuff there, if you want, and you can bring it with you when you find Atral?”

Aloy looked at the spot on the map where Elida was pointing. It wasn’t far, but it was tucked away. She briefly imagined a young Elida and a faceless little boy meeting up there with their families years ago, not realizing where their friendship would take them. It was kind of sweet, really. The anger Aloy couldn’t help feeling a moment ago sort of melted away like cotton candy in a puddle. “Yeah, I can do that, Elida,” she said softly, looking back up at the young woman. “I’m sure he’s not far,” she heard herself say. “He probably just got hung up on the way down. Flat tire or something.”

Elida nodded, but said nothing. She looked at Nakoa. “It was nice to meet you,” she said, inclining her head slightly. “Hope y’all have a good talk,” she added as she turned and walked towards the door. Aloy went back to wanting to punch her. 

 


	6. Of all the Starbucks in all the world...

Nakoa's hands felt cold where Aloy's had been just moments earlier, but she couldn't bring herself to reach across the table now and try to get them back. How had that even happened? Who grabbed whom first? Nakoa could have sworn it was Aloy who had taken her hands, but she couldn't deny she'd thought about doing the same thing herself, so maybe she did without thinking. And when Elida had come over, Nakoa had jumped out of her skin, but was her reaction alone so forceful that she pushed Aloy's chair out from the table? 

And now they were both sitting an awkward distance from the table. Nokoa knew she was going to need at least one shot of strong caffeine if she was going to make it down to Houston yet tonight. Aloy had a half-finished iced coffee in front of her, but Nakoa didn't know if that would be enough to keep her sitting there while Nakoa fetched herself a drink.

"Were you going to get something?" Aloy said, inclining her head toward the counter as if Nokoa's thoughts had been written across her forehead. 

Nakoa glanced over at the barista who was rinsing out a metal pitcher. "Yeah, gimme a second," she said as she stood up.  _ Please don't run away again, _ she didn't say aloud, which should have earned her a medal for willpower. 

Nakoa tended to enjoy the mildly confused little look baristas gave her when she said all she wanted was a black coffee. She handed over the singles and her thermos for the woman to fill. While she waited, she tried to come up with something witty to say, some great way to break the weird ice that had crusted over the conversation back at the table, but her mind was blank. She didn’t even know Aloy. She’d only met her once, and they hadn’t exactly exchanged introductions. Nakoa had thought about her about a hundred times since then; pictured her face when she was trying to fall asleep, or wondered idly where she was and what she was doing. She never actually thought she’d see her again, let alone somewhere so ordinary as a Starbucks in Temple, Texas. This had to be some kind of sign, the universe giving her an opportunity she needed to take. Only, she didn’t know what “taking” it looked like in this case.

“So, I take it Elida was the person you were looking for?” she said, sliding back into the seat across from Aloy. 

Aloy didn’t look up. She was running her finger around the edge of her cup, sliding it over the condensation like a figure skater on an ice rink. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “She ran away from home and her dad thought she was dead.”

Nakoa balked. “Well, that escalated quickly.”

Aloy glanced at her and gave a little smirk, and Nakoa felt her stomach do a flip. “Yeah, rough family, I guess.”

“How’d she wind up here?” Nakoa asked, looking briefly over her shoulder towards the door where the girl had exited. “In a Chick-fil-A Polo?”

“It’s sort of a long,” Aloy’s brow furrowed, “weird story.” She shook her head. “Basically, her boyfriend moved to Waco a while ago when his mom was deported, and they would meet here to bone down every so often.”

Nakoa sputtered a laugh at just the wrong moment and coffee dribbled down her chin. “Oh, yeah?” she said, furtively wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.

Aloy smiled and finally made real eye contact, and Nakoa was reminded of the night in the van when she’d first seen those eyes. The memory was a bad one, all things considered, and she would happily replace it with this new one. “Anyway, they made plans to meet last weekend, to run away together into the sunset or whatever, and he never showed.”

Nakoa frowned. “She still doesn’t know where he is?”

Aloy nodded. “Yeah. He’s who I’m looking for now,” she said, looking down at her palm and running a fingernail along the creases there. 

“Do you have any leads?” Nakoa took another sip of her coffee.

Aloy looked up at her, and Nakoa was surprised to see confusion in her face. “Well, no, not yet.” She raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

Nakoa shrugged. “It seems pretty dangerous, a kid missing like that.” She stifled a shiver. “Has he even been reported missing?”

Aloy sighed. “I’m guessing not. He evidently ditches his foster parents pretty regularly, from what Elida said. Most likely they’re on vacation or something, or maybe they think he’s somewhere else.” She took a sip from her drink, dredging up a few bubbles and not much else. “I found Elida by looking through the phone she left at her dad’s house. I don’t even know where to start with this kid.”

“Didn’t Elida say they stayed at a campground nearby?” Nakoa asked. “Couldn’t you start there?”

Aloy looked sheepish, and Nakoa suddenly felt like she’s said something wrong.”Yeah, I should probably do that,” she said, her voice trailing off. Her gaze seemed to fix itself to Nakoa’s, a ball joint falling into a socket. “I’ll...see you around, I guess.” She gave a little smile that was nothing and meant nothing and stood up, wrapping her hand over the top of her cup.

“Wait,” Nakoa said for the second time, again not knowing how she was going to follow it up. But Aloy stopped, still looking into her eyes, boring into them really, like Nakoa was a life preserver and she was drowning. “Let me come with you.”

_ Well, that doesn’t make any sense _ , she thought immediately, but let her statement stand.

Aloy blinked and hesitated. “Okay.” She scratched the back of her neck with her free hand. “Uh, I’ll drive.”

Nakoa stood up so fast her legs tipped her chair off balance and she only barely caught it. “Yeah, cool,” she said. She could feel her face heating up like an electric stove, but all she could do was hope it wasn’t as visible on her darker skin as it felt. 

_ Why is she agreeing to this? _ She thought as she followed Aloy out of the store, Aloy dropping her cup into the receptacle next to the door. A tiny knot was roiling its way through Nakoa’s gut, and it told her  _ you know why _ , but she didn’t think she could believe it. She tried to push it down and ignore it.

Aloy’s car was an old Prius. A moment after she pressed the ignition, the engine purred to life, followed closely by an ominous rattling noise that seemed to come from just beneath Nakoa’s toes.

“What’s that?” Nakoa said, looking down as if she was going to see a loose nut or sheet of metal hanging off the glove compartment.

Aloy shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Erend found this car for me a couple of days ago. He didn’t seem worried about it.”

“Who’s Erend?” she asked too quickly and in a voice pitched unnaturally high.

Aloy glanced over at her before she turned around in her seat to look out the back window as she reversed out of the parking lot. “A court administrator down in Austin,” she said, and Nakoa tried not to think about how close their bodies were. “I’m staying with him while I wait for the trial.”

Nakoa blinked. “The...trial?”

Aloy turned back around and they pulled out of the lot. “Yeah. Zaid’s boss, Helis, is supposed to go on trial in Austin in a couple of months. I’m going to testify.”

It snapped into place, a key in a lock. “You got him arrested, didn’t you?”

“Not soon enough,” Aloy said. Nakoa knew the darkness in that voice, recognized herself in it. There were ghosts in the car with them. Nakoa’s father, Zaid, and now whoever it was that Aloy couldn’t save. The space around them was getting crowded with pains from the past. But for ridiculous reasons, Nakoa couldn’t really focus on any of that.

“So, Erend’s, like…”  _ don’t say it, oh god, please, don’t be an idiot,  _ “your boyfriend?”

Aloy laughed, high and clear, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Fuck no,” she said loudly, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “Oh, lord, that’s a good one,” she said still laughing.

Nakoa felt her lungs expand, which made her realize she’d been holding her breath. “Oh yeah?” she said airily.

Aloy shook her head. “He’d probably love that, I guess,” she said with a little shrug. “Poor little puppy dog. He’s not my type.” Aloy’s face turned a light reddish color, high on her cheeks.

Maybe she’d imagined it, but Nakoa thought Aloy glanced at her before she’d blushed. The knot in her gut seemed to grow in triumph.

“No, I just met him last year or so, and he told me to look him up if I was ever in Austin.” She shrugged again. “I guess a free couch to sleep on for an indefinite amount of time may not have been what he’d had in mind.” She looked over at Nakoa for a brief moment before bringing her eyes back to the road. “Are you on your way back south?”

Nakoa took a breath as if she was going to say something, but then realized she didn’t have an answer. “Uh...I guess so,” she settled on. “I’ve been working on getting those people back to their homes for so long...I didn’t really think about what I’d do afterwards.” She shook her head. “I should probably go home, at least for a little while. I don’t think ‘Followed the Man who Killed my Father and Shot him in a Parking Lot’ is a good thing to write on a visa application.”

Aloy grunted an assent. “Yeah, probably not.”

A thought came to Nakoa, not for the first time. “I’ve been looking into maybe going into, like, social work or something.” She fumbled for the words. “To, you know, work with people who have been trafficked.”

Aloy took a few glances over at her, portioning out her attention between Nakoa’s face and the road ahead of them. “Really? You’d want to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Nakoa said honestly. “Maybe.”

They were quiet for a few moments, the rattling and the road noise providing a strange soundtrack to their silence. Again, Nakoa was aware of all of the uncomfortable, painful pressures bearing down on them. And, again, Nakoa couldn’t seem to take it very seriously. “So what have you been up to?” she asked at last, her tone oddly casual. “Other than rescuing damsels in distress, I mean.”

“Oh, you know,” she said. “Just odd jobs for people around town. Keeping busy, nothing huge.”

Nakoa raised an eyebrow. “Is tracking runaway children an ‘odd job’ these days?” 

Aloy rolled her eyes. “That girl was just stupid,” she said darkly. “Doesn’t know what real danger is, so she goes out looking for some.” She shook her head. “Takes a special kind of dumb to take off after a boy just because your dad is a grumpy bigot.”

The venom in her words took Nakoa by surprise. “Wow, okay.” she said lamely.

Aloy glanced at her. “Sorry,” she said. It was an apology, not for what she said, but for saying it out loud. “I just...I just don’t have patience for...ignorant people.”

She pulled the car off the road and parked it on the grass next to the post with the number 12 painted on it in yellow. Up ahead, Nakoa could see a two-person tent set up next to a dead fire pit.

“Looks like this is it,” Aloy said, pushing down the emergency brake with her foot and shutting the car off. The rattling slowed into silence and Nakoa immediately felt the oppressive heat and humidity of the outside air closing in on them. Aloy opened her door and got out of the car in a single fluid motion, and Nakoa fumbled with her seatbelt to follow.

The hill sloped gently down from the road towards the shore of the lake. The world around them was flat and open and the water seemed to stretch out in all directions, the lake a nobbly birthmark in the cracks and crevasses of the ground.

“I can see why they met here,” Nakoa said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and though the humidity and the nearby cities stung a bit in her nostrils, the air was clear and refreshing. She almost felt like she was back home. “It’s like a little oasis of peace.”

She opened her eyes to see Aloy looking at her quizzically. “You think so?”

Nakoa blinked and stuttered. “Well, sure.” She used her toe to push a twig into the dirt. “You don’t?”

Aloy looked back at the lake, like she was really considering it, like the first time she’d seen it she’d been distracted, and now she was really looking at it for the first time. “Yeah,” she said after a minute. “It’s probably one of the nicest areas around here.”

Nakoa walked over to the tent. The window flap was open, and she could see inside where someone had spread out two light sleeping bags, one on top of the other, such that the floor of the tent had been turned into a full-sized bed. Hanging from the ceiling of the tent was a little net bag that held a small flashlight, some chapstick, and a couple of pens. Piled up in a corner opposite the door, Nakoa could see a couple of library books and a spiral notebook.

“I think Elida’s going to miss those,” she said, bending down to unzip the door. She slid her flip flops off her feet as she crawled into the tent. It was muggier and hotter inside than it was out, but everything in the tent reminded Nakoa of spring nights spent with her brother and father camping in the backyard for make-shift adventures.

Aloy poked her head in through the flap. She half-stood, half-awkwardly squatted with her hands on her knees. “Any signs whether Atral has been here?”

Nakoa looked back at the pile in the corner and picked up the notebook. Its cover had been flipped back so that the first few pages were waving freely in the breeze. Nakoa squinted, trying to read the big, round handwriting.

 

_ The pain of this distance _

_ Stifles me like a pillow _

_ Frightens me like a shadow _

_ Threatens me like a lightning strike. _

_ I miss you. _

_ I miss you. _

_ I miss you. _

 

Nakoa smiled sweetly, imagining the girl from the Starbucks scratching these words into the paper by the tiny glow from her flashlight, silent angsty tears streaming down her face.

“What is that?” 

She heard Aloy push herself through the tent flap and crawl towards her. The knot in her gut did a flip and threatened her composure.

“Oh, just some teenage love poems,” she said, hoping she kept her voice even.

“‘Alone, I am dead, a cold stone,” Aloy read over her shoulder. “When I am without you, my heart is frozen in the dark places. I can’t breathe air that doesn’t smell like you.’” A low chuckle hummed at the back of her throat. Nakoa felt is as much as she heard it. “‘Your eyes…’” Her breath hitched in her throat. “‘Your eyes light the fire that wakes me.’” She was speaking more slowly, more quietly. Her voice was velvety and warm.

Nakoa turned towards her and felt the knot in her stomach bouncing off the walls of her abdomen when she saw how close her face was. The tent walls seemed to be closing in around them.

Aloy pulled herself in to kneel on the sleeping bags, her knees lightly pressing into Nakoa’s thigh.

“They really like each other,” Nakoa said, immobilized by Aloy’s fierce gaze.

Aloy took a breath that rattled in her chest. “Yes,” she almost whispered. “I think they do.”

Nakoa looked down at the notebook in her hands. “‘When I met you,’” she read, “‘I didn’t realize that I was beginning.’” She swallowed thickly. “‘That you were breathing me back to life.’”

“Nakoa…” Her voice was a whisper now. 

Nakoa looked up at her through her eyelashes. “Yes?”

She looked small; her shoulders, exposed by her the white racerback tank top, hung slack and she knelt with her hands folded in her lap. Her wild hair had been hastily pulled back, the red streaks pulling free and falling loosely around the frame of her face.  At this distance, Nakoa could count the freckles that dotted her nose.

But she didn’t say anything. Her mouth hung slightly open, her lips parted like she was about to speak, but Nakoa could sense that nothing was going to come of it.

_ Please say something _ , she thought desperately.  _ Please don’t make me be the brave one _ .

Nothing. The charge that Elida’s poetry had fired through the air seemed to be dissipating. The opportunity the universe had presented to her was falling slowly away. 

“That night.”  _ Well, that’s one way to keep the emotions running high _ , she thought wistfully.

Aloy was still just looking at her. She seemed to have stopped breathing.

“When you came, when you freed everyone in the van.”

She blushed, but continued her stony silence.

“I...never thanked you.” 

_ Oh, good. _ She fought the urge to roll her eyes.

“I mean, I thought about it a lot,” she continued on, words pouring from her like water out of an open hydrant. “I don’t know how you found us, but I know I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t. And the woman you took us to was amazing, and so helpful. She lent me the car I took to Tulsa.” She looked down at her fingernails and fussed with her cuticles. She could feel her breath coming shallowly, could feel the sweat beading up on her neck and forehead from the heat of the tent. And also maybe not from that at all. “She told me a little about you, about how you just seemed to appear out of nowhere one day, and you flew through Houston like a force of nature. And now you’d killed Zaid and taken off. You were like one of those action movie heroes, a badass walking away from an explosion.”

Aloy looked concerned. “You killed Zaid.”

Nakoa waved her hand. “Yeah, I know, but you brought him to his knees. You overturned that whole operation, nearly single-handedly.”

“No, Nakoa.” Her hands came to wrap around Nakoa’s, and again she was struck by their coolness. “You don’t understand.”

Nakoa looked up at her, the knot in her stomach coming apart and sending pieces of shrapnel through her nervous system in the form of goosebumps and shivers that she clumsily tried to stifle. 

“You killed Zaid,” Aloy said again, faint lines carving themselves into her forehead. “That’s important.”

Nakoa didn’t know what to say. She stared into the greenish, brownish, light-and-fire eyes that were piercing into her like arrows.

“Everyone wanted to,” she continued. “Yan, Solai, they all told me how much your family hated Zaid for what he’d done. But they were scared to face the consequences if they tried to fight back. If they tried to bring him to justice, even just to get him in a courtroom.”

Nakoa nodded half-heartedly. “They all had more to lose than I did.”

Aloy shook her head. “No, stop.” Her voice was suddenly forceful, almost harsh. It made Nakoa jump. “No, what you did was fucking amazing. And then you just kept going, and you took all those people home. And now you’re looking for Atral like he’s someone you know. Like he’s your friend. Like Elida asked you for help as much as me. You barely even met her.”

Nakoa was silent. Her heart was pumping frantically, but her breathing was more even. The two sets of hands in her lap were getting warmer with every passing second.

“When your aunt told me about you, I imagined you had to be...special.” Aloy shrugged with a little smirk. “Maybe a special kind of crazy, sure. But I was excited to meet you. I was…” Her breath came and went in a sigh that divulged how fragile her composure was. “You were what kept me going.”

“You didn’t even know me.”

Aloy shook her head, her gaze falling to the floor of the tent. “No, I didn’t.” Then she looked up again, and there was a ferocity in her gaze that might have scared Nakoa if it didn’t first excite her. “But I wanted to.” She looked down at their hands. “I still…” her voice died.

“I’m not here because of Atral or Elida,” Nakoa heard herself say. She, too, was looking at their hands, as if there was some mystery of life tucked between their intertwining fingers. “I am worried about him--I mean, after everything that’s happened, I’m worried about pretty much every teenager in Texas.” She shook her head. “But, right now, and earlier,” she looked up and found Aloy looking back, “I couldn’t really give two shits about wherever he is.” She swallowed, forcing some remains of the knot shrapnel down where it couldn’t interfere with her resolve. “I just didn’t want you to leave again.” She blinked. “I wanted to be with you. Wherever you were.” She shrugged and looked around her. “So now I’m in a humid, too-small tent that smells of unwashed teenager, and, well, honestly,” their eyes met again, and Nakoa couldn’t read what Aloy’s were saying, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

She did it. She’d said it. She let out a quick breath through her nose and then looked down at her knees, where her hands and Aloy’s hands were still curled around each other. She felt accomplished, the feeling she got when she’d turn in a test in a class, or check something off a list. For just a second, she felt like she’d done what the universe had given her to do, and she could die happy now.

_ But...I won’t though _ , she thought, feeling her eyes widen involuntarily. This wasn’t the end, and no matter what she’d just done, she wasn’t going to die happy in this tent right now. She looked up again, knowing that her expression was like something out of a horror movie. She was here, she was stuck here--she didn’t even have her car nearby--and she’d just said something terrifying. 

_ Fuck. _


	7. There's gotta be a better time than now

_ Say something, idiot _ . 

But, like, what?

Nakoa was looking down at their entwined hands, this expression of pure calm on her face, like Aloy imagined old people got when they lay on their deathbed surrounded by family. Her face was soft, her eyes were warm, their bodies were touching at about seven different points and Aloy couldn’t think of a goddamn normal response to what was easily the best thing anyone had ever said to her.

In the silent seconds--minutes? hours?--that passed, Aloy watched as Nakoa’s eyes grew wide and terrified and her jaw went slack. She looked up, her face a perfect mirror of the static jumping around Aloy’s brain, her eyes searching Aloy’s, hoping maybe that she hadn’t just said what she’d just said.

_ Say something now! _

But before she could force her brain into gear, her ears perked up at the sound of a golf cart rolling past on the dirt road. She turned her head when she heard that cart pull off the dirt road and onto the grass and stop. Parked. The instincts she’d been using to survive for the past nineteen years were telling her to lay low and quiet and figure out why a golf cart was nosing around this campsite. The parts of her body that were still touching Nakoa’s were still screaming at her to not let this moment pass.

Nakoa had looked over at the sound as well, her eyes narrowing skeptically. 

“Camp boss,” Aloy whispered, annoyed that the part of her that wanted to speak only just now knew what to say. “Stay here a second.” She shifted her weight to move towards the tent door, but at the last second realized that leaving meant letting go. Like, literally letting go. She looked down at their hands in Nakoa’s lap and then up into Nakoa’s face before making a sort of apologetic half-smile and giving her a regrettably weird little pat on the knee and crawling out into the paradoxically cooler air outside.

Sure enough there was a woman dressed for an African safari sliding out of her seat in the golf cart, which was adorned with pennants and ribbons and a laminated sign on the back where “Turkey Roost” was typed up in Comic Sans. “Howdy!” the woman called with an exuberant wave of her arm and the clipboard affixed there. “Name’s Katherine.” Her smile was enormous, but Aloy could tell it was as much a part of her face as her nose. It was about as emotionally motivated as a catfish’s whiskers. “You registered at this campsite?”

_ Everyone’s gotta look after the white girl _ , Aloy thought sardonically to herself. “No,” she said. No point in hiding anything here. “Elida sent me here to wait for a friend who was supposed to meet her. Have you seen a teenage boy hanging around here? Name’s Atral?”  _ Horny as fuck, probably _ , she didn’t say out loud.

The woman continued her slow walk towards Aloy and stopped at an uncomfortably short distance, but seemed to consider her words seriously. “A boy? Same age as Elida, I presume?”

Aloy blinked and realized she didn’t know for sure. “Around there, yeah. Elida said they meet here every few weeks or so.”

Aloy saw a flicker of recognition flash quickly across Kathrerine’s face, but it immediately disappeared, hidden by a less boisterous cousin to that eternal smile. “There was a boy, yes. I saw him once or twice.”

“But not recently?” Aloy felt like she was pulling a sliver of wood out of her finger with the resistance Katherine was putting up.

“Elida’s been here since the weekend,” she said. “I haven’t seen him here since then.”

Aloy thought for a second, running through her options. “Elida said she’s reserved this site until Monday?”

Katherine looked down at her clipboard and flipped a page over. “Yep.” She looked back up at Aloy, her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “You said she’s not coming back, though?”

Aloy frowned. “Don’t remember saying that,” she said. “She just asked me to look for Atral.” She gestured vaguely across the lake. “She works at the Chick-fil-A in town.”

Katherine’s expression was still one of thinly veiled skepticism. “Will you be staying with her, then?”

Aloy glanced at the tent where warm hands and bright eyes were barely concealed by the thin polyester.  _ It’s not a promise _ , she thought to herself.  _ And it won’t be coercion. I’ll make sure she knows that _ . “Yeah, probably,” she said, her tone miraculously even. 

“And you are…?” 

Aloy looked back at Katherine and could almost see the many layers of discomfort playing out on her face. The bitter part of her, the part that knew Katherine had only come over because she’d seen a brown girl where there hadn’t been one before, wanted to pull on that discomfort and watch it stretch. But a bigger part of her knew painfully well that kind of behavior had yet to pay off for her.

“A friend of her father’s,” she said.

That seemed to somehow sate Katherine’s appetite for appropriate relationships, and the resting clown face returned. “Well, that’s nice.” She was already turning and walking back to her golf cart. “My spot’s up by the bathrooms near site one,” she said as she slid back into her seat and turned the key. The electric whine of the cart had started and she was already pulling away by the time she said, “If you girls need anything, just give a holler.”

Aloy set her lips into a smile with all the heart of a Gap model and gave a little wave. She watched the cart until it got to the intersection and turned out of sight, then she walked back over to the tent door. Nakoa was looking out through the mesh window she must have opened, and Aloy could see a breeze rippling through her hair. 

“Any luck?” she asked.

Aloy crawled back into the tent while a voice in the back of her mind muttered,  _ You can’t just pick up where you left off _ . “Not really, no. She didn’t know anything about Atral that I didn't already, and she says he hasn’t been around this week.” She zipped up the door behind her and crawled over to the corner, past the infamous poetry notebook still lying open on the sleeping bag. “I think she’ll leave this site alone though, until Elida’s deposit runs out,” she said, picking up one of the plastic-reinforced paperback books. “It can be a base of operations for now.” She carefully avoided elaborating about who would be using it and what those operations would be.

“You said Atral’s foster family is up in Waco?” Nakoa asked.

The title of the book was about as enigmatic as the stock photo of a happy white couple on the cover.  _ This Good Man _ . “That’s what Elida told me. He evidently used to live closer to her and her dad in Austin, but then he moved after his mom left.”

Aloy flipped idly through the pages of the book, smiling to herself at the glimpses she caught of the plot.  _ Elida  _ would _ read this _ , she thought. She got to about the halfway point in the book’s spine when she felt the silence that had settled around her. She looked up to see Nakoa staring off into space, her eyes boring a hole in the tent wall.

“What’s wrong?” Aloy asked, slowly setting the book down.

Nakoa blinked and shook her head, coming back to herself suddenly. She glanced over and Aloy saw a stormcloud over her eyes that she’d seen before, when she’d found her in the van. “It’s nothing,” Nakoa said, unconvincingly. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Aloy turned bodily towards her, narrowly resisting the inexplicable urge to grab her hands a third time. “Hey, no,” she said softly. “It’s not nothing. Tell me.”

Nakoa looked back, and Aloy could swear she saw a lighting strike in her irises. “There are just some terrible stories out of Waco recently,” she said. “The boy I took to Tulsa had gone through there with some of Zaid’s ring.”

Aloy felt her eyebrows knit themselves together gradually. She’d told Elida that Atral was probably fine, just running late. She’d honestly thought that he had probably just gotten caught by his caseworker or something. Of course she’d considered the possibility that he was as vulnerable as any other runaway teen, but she’d so hoped it wasn’t true that she’d sort of brushed over it and forgotten about it.

“Do you think they got him?” her voice was brassy and bold, and she could feel the fear pushing itself out of her pores, excreted like sweat. 

Nakoa shook her head. “No way to know except to go and look.” She was already crawling to the tent door. 

Aloy followed. “Do you know where Zaid’s people in Waco are?”

“No clue,” Nakoa said. She stood and held the tent flap open for Aloy. “Our best hope is to find Atral before they do.”

-=-=-=-=-

Fifty minutes in a car wasn’t long, all things considered. In the days it had taken her to get from Nuevo Laredo to Austin, Aloy had spent an unholy number of hours on a bus. And unlike buses, cars had radios that she could control. But she’d turned this one off after the first commercial came on, telling her enthusiastically to “Come on down to Pizza Guy!” and now too much time had passed with her and Nakoa sitting in silence. Again.

_ Say something this time _ , Aloy thought to herself.  _ Don’t let this disappear _ .

“Your brother and your aunt talked about you like you were a superhero,” she said, trying to remember where the conversation had left off in the tent. What was it she’d said? Something about unwashed teenagers and not wanting Aloy to leave?

“I think they were disappointed in themselves for not following me.” Nakoa’s voice was quiet, but strong. She wasn’t apologizing for anything, but she wasn’t angry either. “It turns out it’s a good thing they didn’t. I was kind of an idiot. Almost got myself killed.”

This conversation was not going where Aloy had meant for it to. “The things your family told me,” she heard herself say, as if from feet away and underwater, “they made me want to know you. I thought if I could just find you, then…”  _ Then what? _ But Aloy didn’t actually know. At the time she’d met Yan, she’d been so focused on getting to Austin, that was practically all she thought about. When Solai had given her Nakoa’s picture, something had shifted and she was intent on finding her in Houston. But Austin and Helis and the trial were still the main occupants of her mind; they were why she was in Texas in the first place, and a picture and buffalo-grass eyes couldn’t change that.

Something even more had shifted after the van. As they’d run together through the thick night to the safe house, Aloy had felt propelled as if by a wind at her back. But it wasn’t until they got to the doorstep and Nakoa had asked, “Where will you go next?” that Aloy actually thought about letting Austin go. She didn’t want to go, to track down Rost’s murderer, to spend months, maybe even years trusting in a legal system that she barely understood. In that moment, with Nakoa looking at her, the diffuse light from the safehouse kitchen falling softly over her face, Aloy had wanted to stay. She’d wanted everything to be someone else’s problem. But it wasn’t; she was the only one who could, so she was the one who would. She’d needed to go, so she’d gone.

There had been something else there, a dream or something, a subconscious thought that finding Nakoa would be the end, and then she could be free and forget the rest. But that was a lie she’d told herself somewhere along the way, and she couldn’t tell it to Nakoa now.

“What do you want to know?” Nakoa’s voice snapped Aloy out of the reverie she’d fallen into. They weren’t in the tent anymore, but they were still sitting very close to each other. They weren’t exactly touching, and the air-con in the car was still much more comfortable than the outside had been. But as Aloy looked over, she saw that Nakoa’s face had the ghost of a smile hidden behind a thin layer of vulnerability. Aloy knew she’d do unspeakable things to see that smile again.

“Everything,” Aloy breathed, realizing too late that her brow was furrowed in concern and her voice sounded almost scared. She shook her head to clear it, taking a deep breath. “Are you from Laredo?”

She gave a little nod. “My dad had a meat chicken farm southeast of there. Yan moved into the city after high school, but I stayed with dad; I managed sales and hiring and things.”

Aloy blinked and glanced at her face before looking back at the road ahead. “Wait, how old are you?” 

“Twenty-one,” Nakoa said. She tilted her head to the side. “Why? How old are you?”

“Nineteen,” Aloy said. “Isn’t managing a farm a full-time job?”

Nakoa shrugged. “No more than chasing down fugitives and slave traders.”

Aloy smirked in spite of herself. “Well, that’s more a hobby, really.”

Then in a flash, there it was, blooming across Nakoa’s face. A real smile, with twinkling eyes and everything. Seeing it made Aloy almost laugh out loud with relief. Maybe she had managed to salvage what she’d almost ruined.

“Did you like it?” she asked. “Farming, I mean?”

“Yeah, actually.” Her voice was light, and she was gradually relaxing against the back of her seat. “I mean, at the time, not really. I thought it was boring and didn’t pay very much. And I mean, I wasn’t wrong,” she laughed. “But there was something nice about being bored sometimes. I don’t think I really appreciated that when I was younger.” To Aloy’s surprise, Nakoa ran her hands up and down her own arms. “It was great exercise, too.”

Aloy felt her face get warm.

 

“What about you?” Nakoa asked, and Aloy’s stomach dropped. “Where are you from originally?”

Aloy shook her head. “It’s a weird story,” she said, keenly aware of the false equivalency she was drawing between herself and Elida. “I was born in Texas,”  _ sort of _ , she added silently. “Grew up in Rio Grande City”  _ if you could call it that _ . “Dad was a PF,”  _ only dad I care about, anyway _ “Mom died when I was little,”  _ I think _ . “There’s nothing left for me there,”  _ or really anywhere but this car. Please don’t leave.  _ “Did you spend a lot of time up here? I mean, before.” 

Nakoa shook her head. “Not really. Yan was always more of a homebody, so when he just up and moved out, my dad was crushed. I’d always wanted to come to the States--I never thought about it, really, just knew it had to be better than Laredo--but it was too hard to leave my dad.” Aloy could hear wistful memories clouding over Nakoa’s thoughts and scolded herself for dredging them up.

“What do you think you’ll do now?” she asked, grasping at anything to move the conversation away from this painful territory. “You said you were thinking about social work? Like going to school?”

Nakoa shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t have much money saved up, but after I sell the farm and pay off my dad’s debts, if there’s some left over, maybe I can get an Associate’s.” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know how to get where I want to go, really.”

“You’ve got a good start, though,” Aloy said and immediately regretted how stupid it sounded. “Maybe you don’t need school, anyway. Maybe you can just find a non-profit or something near a port of entry and learn on the job.”

“I want to do it right, though,” she said.

“What makes you think you wouldn’t?”

“There’s just a lot of....moving pieces,” she said slowly. “I don’t want to just jump in completely unprepared.”

Aloy let out a little, unbidden laugh. “What exactly are we doing now?”

Nakoa’s small smile lit Aloy up from the inside out. “Acting like vigilantes, honestly.”

“Batman is a vigilante,” Aloy said coyly.

“So is Ammon Bundy,” Nakoa said with an eyebrow raised. “It’s not noble to break the law.”

“Just necessary sometimes,” Aloy said. she felt her heart beating to the rhythm of their admittedly strange banter. “At this point, we’re just doing what CPS doesn’t have time to do themselves.”

“And I’m sure we’ll report all of this to the proper authorities,” Nakoa said, the smile still in her voice.

“Sure,” Aloy said, “just as soon as Atral is safely back in Elida’s waiting arms.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Aloy saw Nakoa smiling, as if to herself about something non specific. “They’re cute,” she said quietly.

Aloy didn’t know what to say out loud, but to herself she couldn’t help the silly, schoolgirl thoughts that skipped merrily through her mind.  _ They're not the only ones.  _


	8. Not what you hope to find in a dumpster outside Chip and Joanna's bakery

“Those  _ Fixer Upper _ people have a bakery somewhere around here, don’t they?” Aloy asked as they passed yet another weird black billboard with simple white monocode type, signed merely “--Chip.” “What are the odds they have some connection to local human trafficking rings?”

Nakoa smiled at the macabre joke. “I hope low,” she said. “I love their stuff at Target.” Her stomach was rumbling, though, and she could only sort of guess where they might find Atral. “Might as well check it out,” she said. “It’s as good as any place to get off the highway.”

Aloy pulled off the exit and found the Silos bakery and Magnolia Market without much difficulty. Parking was surprisingly tight, for Texas, but they found a spot that had been mostly cut off by the shitty positioning of an oversized pick-up. Not a lot of other cars would fit there, and even fewer Texans would try. Aloy made it work, but Nakoa had to climb over the console and out the driver’s side door.

“Hope we still have side mirrors when we come back,” Aloy said darkly.

“At least you’ve got a back-up camera,” Nakoa said with a smirk. 

“I’ll be sure to remind Erend of that if he complains.” Aloy replied, turning to smile at her. Nakoa watched as her eyes flitted over Nakoa’s shoulder and the expression on her face became suddenly hard. “Fuck.”

Nakoa knew better than to follow her gaze, and instead searched her face for answers. “What is it? Is someone here?”

Aloy blinked, then took Nakoa’s arm and pulled her around the corner where they both stood with their back to the building. “I don’t know, but probably,” she said.

“What did you see?”

“That symbol they use,” she said. “The one on the back of Helis’ jacket.”

Nakoa knew it well. It was spray painted across the front of her house after Zaid had slaughtered her father. “The one that looks like the reset button on computers?”

“It was just some graffiti on a dumpster,” Aloy said. “It doesn’t really give us any information.”

Nakoa’s stomach dropped into her feet, and she had the simultaneous urge both to look inside the dumpster and run away from it. “They use it as a tag,” she said, fighting back nausea. “To take responsibility, usually. To send a message to whoever comes to find their victims.”

All the warmth visibly drained from Aloy’s face, and she closed her eyes. “You’re saying there’s a body in there.”

All Nakoa could do was give a tiny nod. Without a second’s hesitation, Aloy turned and took off running back the way they’d come, passing the car and heading across the street to the small alley between two office buildings.

Nakoa followed her, though her legs refused to keep up. She stumbled over the bump in the road, the bottom of her shoe catching as she didn’t lift her foot up high enough. She fell forward, hard, onto her other foot and took a few awkward steps before she was back on balance.

Aloy had wasted no time; she was holding the dumpster open and pulling herself up to stand on the latch on the side so that she could see in.

“I don’t see him,” she called back, her voice echoing off the metal dumpster and the bare brick walls. “There’s not even much trash in here.”

There wasn’t enough space where Aloy was for Nakoa to stand where she could see. “Does it...does it smell like blood or anything?”

Nakoa heard Aloy take a couple big sniffs. “No, I just smell, like, musty french fries and old coffee. Regular garbage stuff.”

Nakoa frowned. She didn’t know everything about Zaid and Helis’ ring, but she knew enough to be confident that the spray painted symbol meant  _ something _ . “Are there clothes or a bag or anything?”

“Wait.” Aloy lowered the dumpster’s lid so that it lay heavily on her shoulders. Bending at the waist, she tipped herself into the dumpster, reaching for something. Nakoa ran around to the side and grabbed her ankles. Aloy stretched and nearly fall off balance, but after a moment, she resurfaced and came out of the dumpster entirely, letting the lid fall back in place.

She was holding a cell phone.

“It still has battery,” she said. She pressed the home button and behind the date and time and a couple push notifications, a young woman’s face stared sweetly out at them. Her hair was down and straightened and she had done her make-up, but Nakoa recognized her as the girl who had been with Aloy at Starbucks.

“That’s his?” Nakoa asked.

“Now, how do we use it to find him?” Aloy asked, looking at the screen.

“So, he was in the dumpster at some point,” Nakoa said. “Right? He wouldn’t have just happened to drop his phone in the dumpster with this symbol on it, I assume.”

Aloy looked around them on the ground. “Is there any sign of at least which direction he went in?”

Nakoa stared at the ground. It was solid asphalt covered in cigarette butts, blackened gum, and other detritus. It wasn’t exactly a sandy beach where footprints would be obvious.

Suddenly, Aloy pointed to a dark spot on the ground near where she had just jumped from the dumpster. “Is that a boot print?” She crouched down and Nakoa joined her. Sure enough, there was a small dark track where someone had stepped in some viscous liquid that Nakoa hoped wasn’t blood. There was another similar track three or so feet away, headed towards the street.

“It’s all we’ve got,” Aloy said. “I’m going to follow it.”

Nakoa didn’t even consider not going with her. They jogged down the sidewalk for two or three blocks, Aloy scanning the ground and pointing when she saw another print. They were very faint when they were visible, but sometimes there was a fresher drop of that liquid nearby, and Nakoa couldn’t deny how brown-red the stains were. 

When they came to a corner in the sidewalk, they couldn’t see the trail anymore. Aloy stared down, getting as close to the ground as she could without getting in the way of other pedestrians. Nakoa looked up to get an idea of where they were.

On a darkly painted door across the street, hastily spray painted in white, was Helis’ symbol. “Aloy,” Nakoa said, reaching down and pulling her up by the elbow. She didn’t resist, and when she followed Nakoa’s gaze, she started walking towards the door without even checking for cars on the street. Nakoa pulled her back to the curb just as a Corolla honked loudly at them and someone yelled out the window.

“We can’t go in there,” Nakoa said. Her voice was shaking. “That’s one of their houses. We can’t go in there.” She felt her face burning as her eyes went wide in fear.

Aloy turned and looked at her, her eyes searching her face like she was looking for the answer to some unspoken question. “Why would he go back there?”

Nakoa took a breath to steady herself and then looked around again at where they were standing. It was a side street, little more than an alley that dead ended at the back of a building. It had small passages where window air-con units squeezed in between buildings. She started walking towards the end of the street, scanning the ground for the almost useless trail of blood.

“Help.” A dry, painful, and strained whisper came from somewhere to her right. She spun to see a young man wedged back in one of the side passages, his back against one wall and his knees against the other. His face was turned towards her; one of his eyes was swollen shut and the fingers on his outstretched hand were grotesquely splayed out at impossible angles. Nakoa felt bile rise in her throat. She pushed it down as she knelt beside him.

“Atral?” she asked, reaching her hand for him, but not knowing where to touch or whether she should. “Oh my god, Atral, what happened?”

“I’m going to call 911,” Aloy said, swiping up on his phone. “He needs an ambulance.”

Nakoa looked up at her. “Is that safe?” she asked before she could stop herself. “No, of course. You have to.” She shook her head.  _ It probably doesn’t matter _ , she told herself, looking back at Atral. Drool had formed at the corner of his mouth and his remaining eye was heavy-lidded. “Atral, stay awake,” she said loudly, clapping in his face. “You have to stay awake, Atral.”

Behind her, Nakoa heard Aloy on the phone with the emergency dispatch. She gave the name of the cross-street, the address of Helis’ house, and a description of Atral and his visible injuries. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think I can stay with him,” she said.  _ It’ll probably be fine _ , Nakoa told herself again.

Nakoa felt fingertips on her shoulder and looked up to see Aloy with her other hand covering the mouthpiece of the phone. “You can go,” she said quietly, nearly whispering. “I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you at the car later.”

She turned back to the broken and bleeding boy just feet away in the cramped throughpath. “I can stay,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, please,” Aloy was saying. Nakoa looked up at her. “I’m sure it would be fine but, just…” she trailed off, then shook her head. “I don’t want anything to happen.”

Although she wouldn’t admit it, Nakoa felt the same, and was sort of relieved to hear her say it. Most of the time, doing regular things like stopping for gas or checking in at a motel for the night weren’t terrifying. But wherever there were people in uniform, she would rather not be. 

She gave one last look at Atral, whose breath was visible in his heaving chest. Then she stood up and pulled an eyeliner pencil out of her pocket. Her eyes burned as she looked into Aloy’s, and then she took Aloy’s arm and carefully scrawled her cell phone number over her wrist and the back of her hand. 

“Call me when he’s stable or whatever,” she said, surprised by the boldness in her voice. “I’ll come pick you up.”

For a second, Nakoa thought she saw a thought appear on Aloy’s face that Nakoa had had herself several times in the past few hours. But the second passed, and Aloy just nodded.

Nakoa smiled and turned, going back the way they had come, towards the bakery and the Prius and away from the sirens peeling through traffic towards her.


	9. Baby, don't hurt me...

Aloy’s elbows dug into her knees and spots danced in front of her eyes as she pressed her palms against them. Atral’s broken face swam in her vision, and she couldn’t seem to squeeze it out. 

“He’s definitely on medicaid,” she had told the EMT. “He’s in foster care.”

“Are you his foster...parent?” she’d asked.

“No,” Aloy had said. “I don’t know him at all, but I know someone who does; I’ll call her when we get to the hospital.”

“Sign this please,” The EMT had pushed a clipboard and pen into Aloy’s hands.

The paper had said “AUTHORIZATION FOR TREATMENT AND TRANSPORT” across the top, with ominously fine print taking up most of the page. Aloy had scribbled illegibly on the line and printed a made-up name beneath. No one had called her on it yet.

Atral was safe for now; the nurses said he’d stabilized quickly once they gave him saline and cleaned up the worst of his wounds. His fingers were badly broken and swollen, but no one seemed too concerned about his ability to recover. Elida and her father were going to come up tomorrow morning, and Aloy could soon go to work forgetting about him.

“Aloy!”

Aloy’s stomach did a flip before she even turned her head to see Nakoa pushing her way out of the revolving door. She was holding a paper bag and two coffee cups and wearing that smile that made Aloy momentarily forget where she was.

“Nakoa,” she said, almost matter-of-factly, standing up and going to meet her halfway. “What are you doing? I thought you said you’d just pick me up?”

Nakoa shook her head sheepishly. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “I bought some HGTV scones. Is there a place to sit somewhere?”

Aloy’s arms were going to melt, so her attempt to gesture towards the tables by the coffee cart was meager at best. Nakoa seemed to get the idea, though, and took the lead, grabbing a seat by the window.

“I didn’t know what you’d want, so I just got some simple stuff that you can’t not like,” she said, passing Aloy one of the cups and unfolding the top of the paper bag. “Coffee’s sort of lukewarm by now, and I didn’t put sugar in it, so I hope that’s okay.” She pulled a fat scone out of the bag, wrapped in a napkin. “There’s a cranberry and a blueberry almond. What’s your pleasure?” She tipped her head to the side and gave a crooked smirk.

Aloy sputtered and tried too late to turn it into a normal cough.

“Cranberry it is,” Nakoa said, still smiling.

The shadows outside were growing long and the sunlight was taking on an orangey glow. Aloy looked at her phone lock screen for the first time in what felt like hours. “Shit,” she hissed under her breath, swallowing her gulp of coffee. “It’s getting late.”

“Are you going back to Austin tonight?” Nakoa asked, her fingers in front of her mouth as she chewed her bite of scone.

Aloy felt warmth come to her face again. “I hadn’t planned on it; I figured I’d just...stay in Temple so I could come back here and meet up with Elida and her dad in the morning.”

“At the campsite?” 

“It’s as good as anything,” Aloy shrugged. “I’ve got a blanket in the car.” Aloy broke off a corner of her scone and prepared to pop it in her mouth before she added, “Besides, got to get you back to your car.”

Nakoa blinked slowly and seemed to sigh, though Aloy didn’t hear it so much as felt it. “I’m not going back to Houston tonight,” she said. “If it’s okay, I’ll just stay with you, maybe come here in the morning, and then head back tomorrow sometime.”

_ If it’s okay... _

Aloy couldn’t trust that she knew what was happening, but she wanted to. She wanted to believe that she wasn’t just seeing what she wanted to see, or hearing a meaning in her words that wasn’t really there.

“It’s...it’s fine with me,” she said haltingly. “Yeah,” she added uselessly.

Nakoa’s lips curled into each other, becoming a thin line, but her eyes were bright and cheery, and the overall effect was that she looked like she was keeping some happy secret. “Thanks,” she said, and took another bite of her scone. “How is Atral?” she asked through her fingertips.

Aloy gave a noncommittal shrug. “Evidently fine,” she said. “Beaten up pretty bad, but the nurses say he’ll recover. I think they’ll discharge him tomorrow, if they can. It depends on whether Elida knows where he lives or how to contact his caseworker. Or unlock his phone.”

“How’d she take the news?”

“I told her to talk to her dad, to explain where she’s been sneaking off to and to convince him to bring her up here.” Aloy shrugged again. “It seems to have worked, and she promised not to run away before her dad could bring her, so I guess pretty well, all things considered.”

“Have you talked to Atral yet?” Nakoa’s face had grown serious. “About Helis or Zaid?”

“He’s on some hefty pain meds right now,” Aloy said with a grimace. “Even if he could tell me anything, I’m not sure I want to, like, grill him while he’s...like that.”

Nakoa nodded, taking a sip of her coffee. “Makes sense.” She sighed, her brow furrowing. “I just...what sort of operation is this that breaks a kid’s fingers and tosses him in a dumpster to die?”

“What do you mean?” Aloy asked. “What should we expect from traffickers?”

Nakoa shook her head. “I mean, the van was...uncomfortable,” her face was reddening and she seemed to be pushing through her words like a thick puddle, “but we were taken care of, at least enough to keep us alive. That’s what their business is, right? You can’t expect good payment for damaged goods.”

Aloy didn’t know what to say; the phrase  _ damaged goods _ gave her a painful flashback to an awkward conversation with her dad that included a metaphor of used duct-tape.

Nakoa went on. “Do you think he was trying to get Elida for them, to recruit her?” She looked nauseated by the idea. “Or maybe he was going to escape and that’s why they beat him up like that.”

“There’s going to be an investigation,” Aloy said, trying to redirect the conversation. “If Atral can tell the police who did this to him, they might be able to get these bastards once and for all. I’m sure they’ll ask him all these questions.”

“It seems like they left a huge loose end by just dropping him in a dumpster.” Nakoa’s face looked far away. “Do you think they meant for him to get away? Or did they think he would die in there?”

“I think,” Aloy said, closing her eyes, “that it’s not useful to speculate about all of this right now.” She opened her eyes to see Nakoa looking back at her, stunned, almost like she’d forgotten Aloy was even there. “Are you going to be okay?”

Nakoa blinked and seemed to come back to herself. “Right,” she said, her eyes darting quickly around the room. “Yes. You’re right. This is all just speculation.”

Aloy felt like she was going to piss her pants as she reached her hand across the table, palm up, and asked again, “Nakoa, are you going to be okay?”

Nakoa looked down at Aloy’s hand, and Aloy thought she saw a hint of her wondrous smile flit across her face for a second. She brought both of her own hands up and wrapped them warmly around Aloy’s and sighed a little. Her face was reddening and she didn’t meet Aloy’s eyes as she said, “Yes. Yes I am, I think.”

They sat there quietly for what felt like an eternity. Aloy felt like she had just downed a double of something; a warm, tingling sensation started in her legs and climbed its way up her belly and out to her fingertips. At the same time, a knot was roiling in her stomach, requiring action, and Aloy didn’t know what to do with it.

“Hey,” she said at long last, her eyelids fluttering because her body was full of betrayal, “you wanna go?” She tried her hardest to make eye contact, and it almost worked, but only because those buffalo grass irises were historically the only thing that kept her going at times like these.

Nakoa looked up and seemed to steel herself with a deep breath and a nod, and then she said, “Yes. Let’s get out of here.”

Aloy used her free hand to pick up the empty paper bag and her coffee cup, and Nakoa grabbed her own, and they walked together through the revolving door, hand in hand. Aloy felt like she was going to throw up and prayed, more than she ever had before, that she wouldn’t.

 

-=-=-=-

 

The weird music on the unfamiliar radio station was less terrifying than the silent alternative, so Aloy let it hang in the air on the fifty-minute drive back to Temple. The sky was a darkening gray by the time she dropped Nakoa off at her car at the Starbucks.

“I’ll meet you at the campsite,” Nakoa said. “I’m going to stop at CVS first; do you want anything?”

Aloy blinked rapidly to keep her brain from cycling through the inventory list of CVS and trying to guess what Nakoa was getting there. “No, I’m good.”

“Okay,” Nakoa smiled and Aloy died a little bit. “See you in a bit.” She closed the Prius door and climbed into her car.

Aloy was hyper aware of the speed limit on the way back to Turkey Roost, if only because she kept swearing and braking to bring herself closer to it.  _ Birth control? No, goddammit, that doesn’t make sense. Wine? I mean, she is twenty-one. Or maybe she’s buying her own sleeping bag so we don’t accidentally touch in the night and I’m just a pervy crazy person who wants this too much. _

She parked farther into the campsite this time to leave room for Nakoa behind her. Her hands were totally not shaking as she grabbed the huge flannel blanket out of the back of the car and, bunching it up in her arms, brought it to the tent. 

Elida’s notebook of poetry was still sitting open on the floor inside. Aloy simultaneously wanted to burn it and kiss it. She crawled into the tent and set the blanket down, and couldn’t stop herself from reaching for the notebook and picking it up.

_ When I met you _   
_ I didn’t realize that I was beginning, _   
_ That you were breathing me back to life _ .

Nakoa had read that out loud, causing Aloy to call out her name like she was drowning. She hadn’t been able to follow that up with anything because she was a coward for whom words were not a strong suit.

Aloy set the notebook down by the window flap and began spreading the blanket out over Elida’s sleeping bag. “Reality check real quick,” she whispered to herself. “Is there anything innocuous that I could say or do to figure out whether she’s, like, into me without giving away how bad I want this? Like, just in case she wants to just come back here and sleep and be friends and part ways tomorrow?” She smoothed out the blanket nervously, petting it like it were a cat. 

“Like, what if when she gets here I say, ‘Hey, I had fun today’?” She shook her head and felt her face burn. “No, that’s ridiculous. We just left Atral unconscious in the hospital. That wasn’t fun.”

She looked down at her pants and lamented that they were jeans. “Should I take these off now so that I don’t have to do it with her in the tent, or would that seem too suggestive? I can’t fucking sleep like this.”

_ I probably can’t fucking sleep at all _ .

“It’s going to be a long night.”

Aloy heard tired crunching the gravel road outside and felt her eyes go wide. Before she could make a conscious decision of what to do, she found herself peeling off her shoes and socks and climbing under the blanket, rolling over on her side with her back to the tent door.

The tires stopped, and the light from the headlights shut off. A car door opened. A car door closed. Aloy’s heart was racing and her breath was shallow.

_ Pull yourself together _ , she thought to herself, her eyes squeezed shut.  _ You’re acting like she’s a goddamn grizzly bear. _

The tent door zipped open.

“Aloy?” Her voice was a whisper. Aloy could hear she was holding a plastic bag.

“Mmm?” Aloy hummed back.  _ Am I honestly pretending to be asleep right now? _

“Are you...going to sleep?” Aloy could feel her crawling across the tent towards her.

“Only i-if you are…?” She said. She heard the words leave her mouth like someone else was saying them, and at that moment, she kind of wished that were the case.

She heard Nakoa chuckle and set down her bag. “Are you still wearing your jeans?”

“Uh...yes,” Aloy said, her eyes still shut tight. 

“Well, that’s a choice, I guess.” Her voice was closer; she was kneeling right next to Aloy’s shoulders.

“Yes...I guess it was,” Aloy said.  _ This is the worst. _

“Aloy, can I ask you something?” Aloy heard her lie down, could feel her heat very close.

“Yeah,” she said dumbly.

“Why do you think this is so hard?”

The words were a punch to the gut, and Aloy almost brought the scone back up.

“W-what?”

“You’re probably the bravest person I’ve ever met,” Nakoa said, her voice right in Aloy’s ear now. “And yet I’ve had to make all of the moves so far.”

Aloy’s face was definitely on fire now. Her shoulders were glued to her ears and her fingers were ice cold. She didn’t say anything.

“Can I look at you?” Her voice was soft and quiet. “I want to see your face.”

Aloy took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her chest, and turned over in an awkward shuffle. Nakoa was laying on her side, her face so close to Aloy’s that even in the dying light, Aloy could see the brown flecks in her golden eyes. She was smiling a sort of sweet, apologetic smile.

“Thanks,” she said. She reached her hand up to Aloy’s face and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Aloy felt her skin tingle like her movement had left a mark. “Why is this so hard?” she asked again.

Aloy blinked, and to her horror, realized that tears were coming to her eyes. “I...I…” she didn’t know what to say, in part because she didn’t know the answer. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I haven’t either,” Nakoa whispered. “It’s a little scary,” she added in a bigger voice, “but I like it. Do you like it?”

“Maybe.” Aloy closed her eyes lightly and took a breath before she said, “I like you.”

Her smile turned warm and Aloy felt like she was dipping herself slowly into a hot tub. “I like you, too.” She reached out and slipped her hand under the blanket, finding Aloy’s hand and squeezing it. “I like you a lot, Aloy.”

The way she said her name made it sound like a magic word. 

“Can...can I kiss you?” Her eyes were wide, and she looked almost as terrified as Aloy felt.

Aloy gave the smallest, weakest nod, wishing it could be more.

Nakoa brought Aloy’s hand up to rest on her cheek as she leaned in, closed her eyes, and brought their lips together with warm, light pressure.

Aloy felt a hand at her hip, pulling her closer, and another hand at the back of her head. Greedily, she pulled her own arm out from beneath her to wrap around Nakoa’s shoulders. She brought her other hand up to Nakoa’s waist.

_ I can’t breathe air that doesn’t smell like you. _

Her skin was so smooth and warm, Aloy’s hands danced across it, trying to map it and memorize it. Nakoa’s fingers tangled in Aloy’s hair and pulled, and Aloy felt herself leaning into it. She pulled Nakoa’s lip into her mouth and tucked it between her teeth. She could feel the tip of Nakoa’s tongue sliding into her, sneaking like a thief. Aloy opened herself up to it, and immediately their bodies shifted: Nakoa wrapped her leg around Aloy’s knee and pressed their hips closer into each other. Aloy felt like she was being devoured at the same time that the knot in her stomach began to come loose.

She slipped her hand beneath Nakoa’s t-shirt and tentatively crawled up the soft berm of her belly. She felt Nakoa’s muscles dance and twitch beneath her fingers and had to stop to savor the sensation. She could feel Nakoa’s lips curling against hers, and before she could stop herself, she opened her eyes to see that smile.

Nakoa’s eyes were closed with a tiny pinch at her eyebrows, but her face was relaxed and, yes, there it was. She was smiling. Aloy’s breath caught in her throat.

_ Your eyes light the fire that wakes me. _

Nakoa’s eyes popped open and she pulled back a half an inch. “What is it? Are you okay?”

Aloy swallowed the unfamiliar lump and tried to talk. “Y-yes, I’m fine,” she said in a scratchy whisper. “Sorry, I was just…” Her eyes drank in Nakoa’s face. “You’re just really pretty.”

She laughed, her fingers loosening in Aloy’s hair but still pressing warmly against her back. The tips of her fingers lightly drew swirls and circles at the skin there, sliding every so often beneath the band of her jeans. “You look like a lost puppy,” Nakoa said, stroking Aloy’s cheek with her thumb.

Aloy raised her eyebrows. “But, like, in a hot way?” she asked.

Nakoa laughed again, and Aloy joined her. They pulled each other closer; Aloy hiked Nakoa’s leg up around Aloy’s hip, and Nakoa tugged the blanket over the two of them. They rested their heads on each other’s arms. They lay there together quietly for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes and playing with each other’s hair.

“Are you able to sleep in jeans?” Nakoa asked in a whisper.

Aloy’s heart stopped momentarily. “Not...usually. They’re not comfortable, really, no.” She fumbled over her words. 

Nakoa’s eyes went wide. “Oh, we don’t have to do anything,” she said quickly. “No, if you’re...because I’m not really...and I actually am pretty tired, I just…” Her face was reddening spectacularly. 

Her disjointed nervousness paradoxically calmed Aloy. “Right, no, that’s fine,” she said, also blushing and smiling. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “We’re being sort of ridiculous.”

Nakoa laughed a little and nodded bashfully. “A little, yeah.”

“Let’s just, uh,” Aloy looked around them at the near complete darkness that had descended, “get comfortable. You know,” she added, her finger tapping nervously against Nakoa’s hip, “for sleeping.”

“Right,” Nakoa said with a little nod. “Comfortable. Sleeping.”

Neither of them moved for a minute, seemingly entangled inextricably together on the floor of the tent. Realizing this simultaneously, they both laughed a little and disengaged, sitting up. Nakoa slid out from beneath the blanket and turned towards the front of the tent. Aloy reached down, with shaking fingers, and undid the button and zipper of her jeans before slipping them off, folding them hastily, and setting them aside. She also slid her bra off and through the armhole of her tanktop, like she was back in high school swim class.

She heard the rustle of the plastic bag, and as she crawled back beneath the blanket she saw Nakoa pull something out and begin fiddling with it out of sight. Once she brought it to her mouth, Aloy could see that it was a toothbrush.

_ Oh _ .

“That was smart,” she said wistfully. Nakoa turned to look at her, still wiggling the brush over her teeth vigorously. 

“I baw- do,” she said through a mouth full of brush and suds. She reached back into her bag and pulled out the packaging, where a second toothbrush was still wrapped next to the empty case for the other. 

Aloy accepted it, and the travel-toothpaste, and they knelt together, brushing their teeth in the tent. This was, in a million ways, not how Aloy had expected this day to end.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hatchi matchi, life has been a slog for the past few months. It doesn't help my writing that I had really only planned either of my ongoing stories up through the pseudo-sexy scenes, so I have a bit of writer's block atm. But I promise I haven't let these fics go, yet.


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